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Apparently this brilliant mock trailer for the “happy version” of The Shining has been on YouTube for 3 years, but I just discovered it in a post on Brand New, cited as an effective metaphor for the horrible decision of the merged United and Continental airlines to simply merge their logos as well.

Anyway… wow. This trailer really messed with my brain. Watch:

The most disturbing part for me was that for most of it, I believed it was a real trailer. I was too young when The Shining came out to be able to remember the marketing campaign for it, but I’ve seen enough late-’70s and early-’80s movie trailers as bonus features on DVDs to recognize the dippy narration as de rigeur for the era.

It wasn’t until I heard a brief snippet of my favorite piano motif from the soundtrack of The Shawshank Redemption that I realized it was fake… and then moments later, when “Solsbury Hill” (a song that at least existed when the movie was made) came in, the conceit went over the top — funny, but obvious.

Regardless, this is a brilliant piece of work. In addition to being hilarious, it shows how you can twist an assortment of brief clips from a movie to tell just about any story you want. (It also helps explain why trailers can be effective in selling tickets for a crap movie… which The Shining, of course, is not.)

Unsolicited tip for media company c-levels: if your reaction to this crate of magic is “Hm. I wonder how we’d go about suing someone who ‘did this’ with our IP?” instead of, “Holy crap, clearly, this is the freaking future of entertainment,” it’s probably time to put some ramen on your Visa and start making stuff up for your LinkedIn page.

Because, this is what your new Elvis looks like, gang. And, eventually somebody will figure out (and publicly admit) that Kutiman, and any number of his peers on the “To-Sue” list, should be passed from Legal down to A&R.